With our strategic UC Insights series for 2018, we’re speaking to some of the leading communication and technology companies and leaders in the marketplace, and asking for their insights into the disruptive nature of 2017, and what we might be able to expect as we move into the year ahead.
Natterbox is an innovative telecom and cloud telephony company designed to help organisations deliver world-class levels of customer experience (CX) to their audience, through the effective and efficient integration of intuitive voice channels with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. We caught up with Ian Moyse, the Sales Director for Natterbox, and winner of our recent Best Unified Comms Blogger 2017 to get his views on the marketplace.
What’s 2017 Been Like for Natterbox, How Have You Empowered Customers?
2017 has been an incredibly disruptive and innovative year so far. The first thing I wanted to talk to Ian about, is how Natterbox has been contributing to the marketplace over the last year. He told me that Natterbox has been focusing on helping their customers to disrupt the status quo of telephony by accessing the resources they need to upgrade customer experience through the Salesforce ecosystem.
“What we’ve seen in 2017, is that businesses want more from their phone system. They don’t just want to make calls anymore. We’ve started to see a growth in spotlighting the customer side of the business, as companies realise that telephony is simply a driver in helping them to get more out of the other systems in their business, like sales and marketing. Rather than just making a call, today’s organisations want to assess the quality of calls, whether they’re delivering the best experiences, with the right information at the right time.”
Natterbox sells typically using the direct model, but much of their work comes through the Salesforce ecosystem, where Salesforce and their channel partners refer people to Natterbox when they’re searching for a more comprehensive end-to-end customer service boosting experience. In other words, Natterbox is working alongside other elements in the UC marketplace to achieve the best level of value for the customer journey.
What Priorities Should Be on a CIO’s List for 2018?
For Ian, the main priorities that need to be addressed by CIOs and other executives in any business, centre around selling in the age of the empowered customer. Both for this year and in 2018, Ian and Natterbox believe that business will be driven by customer experience: “CX is becoming the key mantra in the marketplace, driving stronger engagement with customers. Though of course price points and product/service function and features matter in the buying decision, analysts tell us that by 2020, the lead differentiator in the marketplace will be customer experience. Unfortunately, businesses are not serving customers well in their telephony experience.”
Today’s customers have more expectations from their interactions with brands than ever before. In fact, as Ian suggested, they generally want to access the same experience over the phone, as they would online, with the same levels of ease, speed, personalization, and support.
“Unfortunately, when someone phones a business, they have to go through the same generic experience time and time again, regardless of whether the business already has data about that customer.”
According to Natterbox, everyone from CIOs to CEOs need to think about how they can access technology to deliver a more differentiated, and reliable customer experience:
“It’s about combining data, processes, people, and technology. The whole business needs to get involved in improving customer experience.”
What Challenges and Opportunities Do You Predict for 2018
The disruptive atmosphere of 2017 has contributed to a lot of chatter in the UC space. There’s been a great deal of change with things like the Cisco BroadSoft acquisition, and the announcement made by Microsoft about merging Skype for Business into Teams. I wanted to know what Ian thought about this new environment, and what Natterbox foresees as being significant trends for the future.
“I think we’re going to see the consolidation and disruption continue to accelerate. Today, businesses are using new technologies to enter the market in new and transformative ways, disrupting the status quo of legacy industries and traditional telephony vendor offerings. If you look at the Fortune 500 right now, around half of the top ten companies have only been around for 12 years or less.”
“It’s technology that is allowing these brands into the top spots because they can take advantage of innovations faster and better serve and attract todays customer. Legacy companies have these shackles around their ankles in terms of old technologies and processes that make it harder to compete.”
Newer companies simply don’t have shackles of legacy processes, systems and resistance to change holding them back. They don’t have to change from old technology into new systems because they can instantly embrace the most recent and relevant solutions.
“Legacy firms need to take on the pain of change sooner to gain the benefits on the other side and remain relevant to the customer of today.”
What Are your Top Tips for 2018?
As we move into 2018, there are likely to be many concerns on a CIO’s agenda, particularly when it comes to things like security and digital transformation (DX). Ian told me that he believes the two big concerns will be GDPR, which becomes law in May 2018, and customer experience.
“GDPR has an impact not just on security, but also how you interact with customers too. That links to the other concern around CX. It’s predicted that this will be the lead differentiator in 2020, but you can’t wait until then to make the needed changes. You need to think about how customers are viewing you, what competitors are doing, and how you can use technology to transform.”
“Customers interacting by choice or need over the phone are struggling; at speaking events I see an audience agreeing in their frustration that businesses are letting themselves down, we are all fed up of bad phone interactions, endless generic IVR menus, no personalisation, being bounced around departments and retelling our needs repeatedly.”
“Businesses want to deliver an omni-channel customer experience, but any channel you open needs to be well served at high quality, not a box ticking exercise. Instead of trying to do everything at once, I think businesses should look at their customer interaction channels, like their website, telephony, email, and chat, and make sure the ones offered are done well, personalising the customer experience.”
The technology for a more personalised and effective telephony customer experience already exists today. In fact, it’s something that Natterbox empowers their customers to achieve through their AVS (Advanced Voice Services) product.
Ian finished our conversation by saying:
“My message is that businesses need to accept that change might be hard, but it can’t be stopped, its customer driven!. It’s something you need to embrace and commit to, or you’ll simply fall behind and incur losses and pain.”
